There’s an excellent Simpsons episode in which Bart becomes a TV journalist and brilliantly mimics the faux-concerned, hand-wringing tone of news reporters. As I read the first paragraph of this article it was Bart’s voice intoning in my head:

“It should have been a chill midwinter day in St Louis as Professor James Zachos laid out his findings last week on how the world could be about to change for ever. But as the expert in earth sciences addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on the dangers of climate change, the weather was noticeably warm and muggy”

A deeply significant harbinger of doom or what!

Yet this article was not all hot air and tosh. In a rare show of balance space was given over to the views of Richard Lindzen (professor of atmospheric physics at MIT) and Philip Stott (emeritus professor of bio-geography at the University of London). The latter was especially good on “apocalypticism“:

“The language of climate change is also becoming religious. Part of the myth is that it has to be our sin that causes it. The second part of the myth is that you have to offer up a sacrifice — and here we have to flagellate ourselves, cut down on products, stop the car, actually sacrifice to the earth.”

But no sooner do you read that than up pops Bart Simpson again (aka journalists Jonathan Leake & Jonathan Milne):

“Lindzen and Stott, however, are part of a tiny minority, with most scientific experts accepting that climate change is a serious threat”